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Tuesday, 10 April 2018

Labour raises minimum wage demand from N56,000

The Organised Labour has presented fresh demand for the new National Minimum Wage for workers to the tripartite committee, using current economic indices as its yardstick.

It said the N56,000 earlier presented was no longer feasible.

Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) General Secretary Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson, who spoke in an interview in Abuja, said the earlier demand by labour, which was presented two years ago, has been overtaken by the present economic realities.

The NLC scribe said that the fresh demand was submitted at the last meeting of the tripartite committee after an agreement among Labour leaders.

He said: “We have taken a position when we made the initial demand on the government, which is almost two years back. But then when we got to the tripartite committee and the committee called on all stakeholders involved to submit a memorandum.

“In responding to the request for a memorandum, we then use current economic indices to make a fresh demand. So, what we place and what we demand is an outcome of analysis we carried out.

“We did the analysis using the current economic table and data of the nation and of cause that came to something different. We are going to maintain what is in the memorandum that we have submitted to the tripartite committee and it is not something or a figure we will be discussing in public.”

He said the fresh demand was contained in a joint memorandum by the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), saying: “We have also formerly made the presentation to the committee and we have defended it and we have a different submission from the initial one. We have also taken account of changes between the first demand and the current position.”